2014 Spirit Base: 841-855

#841 - Chris Owings, #842 - Tyler Pastornicky, #843 - Brian Matusz
I wonder how many NL Rookie of the Year votes Owings will get?

#844 - Joe Kelly, #845 - Justin Grimm, #846 - Eric Surkamp
I'm glad these three pitcher shots have some variety.

#847 - Pedro Villarreal, #848 - Josh Tomlin, #849 - Boone Logan
If trading cards had stooped to the level of greeting cards and added the little sound plug, I could imagine this Tomlin card would say "alright, alright, alright."

#850 - David Price, #851 - Jose Veras, #852 - Raul Ibanez
I thought I had better give Price a normal-looking card for Series 3 since his previous one features him with a cow and all.

#853 - Mike Morin, #853 - J.P. Howell, #854 - Andrew Heaney
I really like Heaney's card. Probably because it's one of the few Marlins' images that fits the color scheme.

2914 Spirit Base: 431-440

#431 - Scott Feldman
Feldman's been a decent starter for Houston this year. He'll help eat up some innings the next couple of seasons while the Astros young guys get better.

#432 - Salvador Perez
Probably the best catcher this year in the state of Missouri.

#433 - Raul Ibanez
I feel like there's probably some hidden Ninja Turtles story about an uncle named Raul.

#434 - Josh Beckett
It's hard to believe that the current edition of Josh Beckett was the one to toss his first no-hitter instead of the bad ass from 10 years ago. Almost as weird as Lincecum tossing 2 since he fell into the stinkhole.

#435 - Casey McGehee
Another blast from the past. McGehee's OPS+ is sitting right at 100, which is league average. The last time he was at 100 or above was 2010! Yet he was still up for the All-Star Final Fan vote in July. Even though I root for a team that has Ryan Vogelsong in its starting rotation, I'm still amazed at all the out-of-nowhere comebacks in 2014.

#436 - Ryan Braun
It'll be hard to tell if Braun's decline is a result of him not "juicing" or if it's just plain aging. I bet I know which one most people will believe. I'm still on the fence I guess.

#437 - Samuel Deduno
Deduno may or not be making an appearance in Series 3. He's on the Astros now but we'll see how much room there is on the checklist for a middle reliever to get his second card.

#438 - Curtis Granderson
Grandy's numbers have taken a bit of a dip since leaving Yankee Stadium.

#439 - Jacoby Ellsbury
Hard to believe Ellsbury's only been an all-star once in his career. (2011)

#440 - Luke Gregerson
Literally the only photo I could find of him in an A's uniform that would work for these cards.

THIS IS THE REMIX: 1986 Topps

As per Rod's request, here's my stab at remixing the 1986 Topps design. And since this is my first chance to brag a bit about the Giants' World Series victory, I figured I'd feature some of the standout players from the 4 teams that made it to the LCSs this season.

Let's take a look at the original 1986 design. This is probably one of the most iconic sets for collectors of my era so I hope I'm not treading on sacred ground here. The most prominent feature is the big, funky team name over the black border. The big team name in team color is really effective but my goodness, that font... Those As and Es are from another planet. That quirkiness is probably a reason why some love this design while it's likely the reason some might hate it. No matter which side of the fence you reside, it's way past its prime here in 2012.

The rest of the design is refreshingly simple. The black border extends down the edges just a little bit more before giving way to the white border around the rest of the photo. At the bottom, the player name is set in all caps and loosely spaced to fill up the horizontal real estate. The last element is the player position tucked inside a colored circle tucked into the bottom left corner of the photo.

Now let's take a look at the updates. First up is the font up top. I went with Dispatch Black once again since it comes in a variety of widths. That flexibility helps when you have team names of varying length. The Cardinals is the condensed width while the other 3 are the standard width. It has enough personality to help it balance between boring and obnoxious. It hits the sweet spot right in the middle.

Next up is the player name found at the bottom. I wanted to add a little more color to the design so I made a rectangle at the bottom of the photo to house the player name. There's also room in there for the player position so it isn't hanging out by itself in the corner like before. There are also some minor tweaks to the border widths to help with the centering issues that plague the 1986 set.

This is probably the most subtle of my remixes so far but that's partly due to the success and simplicity of the original design. The biggest change is definitely the font up top, the most iconic feature of almost any card design from the 80s. So what's up next?